During the post-show press conference Rumble winner Cody Rhodes and WWE chief content officer and head of creative HHH had very different takes on the Vince McMahon scandal and how it caused a dark cloud to hang over the entire Rumble weekend.
HHH didn’t offer any details or opinions on the scandal, crisis during his time in front of the press.
“I am going to do exactly what you’d expect me to do here. Look, we just had an amazing week. We just inked a ten-year, $5 billion Netflix deal. The Rock joined our board. We just sold-out the Royal Rumble. We put 48,000 people in Tropicana Field. I choose to focus on the positive. Yes, there is a negative but I want to focus on the positive and keep to that,” he said.
HHH was pressed again about how WWE employees can expect to feel safe in the future.
“I will give you the most generalized answer that I can. Everything possible (is being done). Yeah, that is a very important thing to us. It is a very important topic to us. It is as simple as everything possible,” he said.
He was then asked if he read over the lawsuit brought against the WWE, Vince McMahon and John Laurinaitis.
“I did not. I did not. I think Cody mentioned that we found out real time like you did and that’s the truth. I will go back to what I said before this is an amazing week for us. At this point, I don’t even want to get bogged down in the negatives. I just want to focus on the positives of where we are going. It is the most exciting time of the year for us. We are at the most exciting point business-wise that I think we have ever had. Cody said it best. It is the best positioning of this company since the Attitude Era. I have been through that era. I know what it is like. I feel like we are in the middle of something that although we aren’t able to put our finger on it right now five or ten years from now we will be saying ‘Wow! What a time that was!’. I want to focus on that,” he said.
Rhodes took a different approach offering his candid thoughts on the situation.
“It’s a great question. I know as far as the news is concerned we were finding it out and reading the same things you guys were reading. You said a ‘dark cloud’. It certainly is. TKO, Nick Khan and the board took it very seriously and acted immediately,” said Rhodes.
On what the WWE could do to prevent any situations of emotional and sexual abuse in the future Rhodes stated that people need to be accountable and responsible for their actions and protect each other.
“Looking at the future, I don’t know the answer to that somewhere there is just a really basic tenant. This crew, more than ever from a roster standpoint, is very family-oriented. I have never seen anything like this. Most of the time wrestling locker rooms are fighting, talking trash about each other, making fun of each other, sand-bagging each other in the ring and all that nonsense,” he said. “This crew is very team-based and perhaps that is the ingredient. Everyone looking out for everyone, being accountable and for me as a performer and competitor, I have been through dark periods like this in our industry before.”
Cody stated that the events over the weekend compelled him to do his best to entertain people and perhaps make them forget about that “dark cloud” for a few hours during the Rumble.
“It might sound cheesy but it is very reinforcing if you are in my position it is a time when ‘Hey! We’ve got 51,000 people out here and I want to give them something else from this weekend that isn’t a terrible situation and terrible news’. I think we were able to do that and obviously as more news comes out we will be seeing it just like you do,” he said.
Ex-employee accuses Vince McMahon, John Laurinaitis of abuse, sex trafficking
